1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to requirements for products and services and, in particular, to tools for establishing requirements. Still more particularly, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for establishing a structure for a requirement and for establishing the quality of the requirement as the requirement is being written.
2. Background
Written requirements may be used to establish and communicate various characteristics of items. These items may be products, services, or both. For example, an acquirer of items may establish requirements to communicate the characteristics of items to be acquired to a supplier. The requirements may become part of a contract or other agreement between the acquirer and the supplier concerning the items.
The supplier may use the requirements to develop the items. For example, the supplier may use the requirements to design the items, to manufacture the items, or otherwise to provide the items to the acquirer. The supplier may employ a requirements management tool to ensure that the items are developed in a manner that satisfies the requirements. Items delivered to the acquirer by the supplier may be checked against the requirements to determine whether or not the items satisfy the requirements.
Establishing requirements for items may present a number of technical problems such that establishing requirements for items may not be performed in an effective and efficient manner by human developers alone. In the past, establishing well drafted requirements at the beginning of product development may have been less of an issue. Many skilled systems and multi-disciplined engineers may have been employed to review and revise requirements as a product was designed and eventually built. Currently, the requirement for such high levels of human effort and skill may make the development of some new products technically and economically unfeasible. This may be particularly true for more complex products, such as aerospace vehicles.
For less complex products, such as consumer products and automobiles, requirements need only define the performance or other characteristics of a relatively small number of component parts of the product. For example, requirements for a consumer product may define dozens to a few hundred component parts. Requirements for an automobile may define a few thousand component parts. Poorly drafted requirements for such relatively less complex products may not carry cost, performance, and schedule risks that cannot be mitigated before or during manufacturing of the product. A quality review of the requirements for a product may be performed relatively easily for a product with relatively few components. Furthermore, for less complex products, it may not be a great challenge to correct design and requirement errors or omissions, even late in the design and production cycles. The development of an integrated product architecture defining the requirements and the functional, logical, and physical architecture of a relatively less complex product may be manageable by human developers. For example, product life cycle information and product data management for relatively less complex products may be developed and performed manually by design, systems, and quality engineers over a relatively short period of months or one or two years.
More complex products, such as aerospace vehicles, may comprise millions of parts and components. The drafting of high quality requirements for such complex products may be far more complicated. The level of skill and the amount of effort required to design such a complex product and to develop requirements and an integrated product architecture for such a product may take millions of man-hours spanning a decade or more. The product definition defined by the requirements for such a complex product, and the integrated product architecture thereof, may be so complicated that it is impossible as a practical matter to employ a workforce of sufficient size and skill to enable the review of the tens of thousands of data items defining the requirements for such a product. Such data items may include a myriad of complicated requirements that establish the functional, physical, and logical elements of the integrated product architecture.
The cost, schedule, and performance risks for poorly drafted requirements may be much higher for more complex products. Errors or omissions in the design and requirements definitions for a complex product may result in termination of the effort to develop the product. This is evidenced by the cancellation over the last decade of many programs for the development of commercial and military air and space vehicles.
Establishing requirements for relatively complex products, such as aerospace vehicles and other items, may not be performed in any practical manner by human developers alone. At the same time, the costs and risks associated with poorly drafted requirements may be higher for such complex items. Therefore, establishing requirements for relatively complex items and other items may present a number of technical problems.
The designing, manufacturing, and testing of items to satisfy requirements present various technical problems. For example, requirements for an item may define various technical characteristics of the item that must be included in the design for the item or satisfied by the design for the item. Requirements for the item may define or affect how the item is manufactured. Requirements for the item also may define or affect how the item is tested to determine whether the item satisfies the requirements.
Establishing accurate and unambiguous requirements for items presents another technical problem. Requirements that include errors or omissions, or that are ambiguous, may affect the design, manufacturing, and testing of items in undesired ways. For example, such requirements may result in items that do not satisfy desires or expectations. Such items may need to be redesigned and remanufactured at considerable expense.
Establishing requirements for items in an efficient manner presents another technical problem. For example, requirements for an item may need to be established before design, manufacturing, and testing of the item may begin or be completed. Therefore, delays in establishing requirements for items may result in undesired delays and costs in producing items. Furthermore, costs associated with establishing requirements for items may affect the total cost of the items in undesired ways. For example, higher levels of effort or skill that may be used to establish requirements for items may increase the costs of the requirements and of the resulting items.
Current systems and methods for establishing requirements may be less effective than desired for consistently generating accurate and unambiguous requirements in an efficient manner. Illustrative embodiments provide a technical solution to the problems of designing, manufacturing, and testing of items to satisfy requirements by providing a method and an apparatus for establishing accurate and unambiguous requirements for items in an efficient manner. Illustrative embodiments provide a technical solution to the problem of establishing accurate and unambiguous requirements for items by providing a system and a method for establishing the quality of requirements as the requirements are being established. Illustrative embodiments provide a technical solution to the problem of establishing requirements for items in an efficient manner by providing a system and a method for establishing desired structures for requirements.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus that takes into account one or more of the issues discussed above, as well as possibly other issues.